360 research outputs found
Author Christine Harris, Sydney, 1996 /
No full textTitle devised by cataloguer from acquisitions documentation.; Part of the collection: Portraits of various significant Australians, 1988-2000.; Mode of access: Online
Aboriginal author Philip McLaren, 1992 /
No full textTitle devised by cataloguer from acquisitions documentation and reference sources.; Part of the collection: Portraits of various significant Australians, 1988-2000.; Also available online at: http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn6330279
Aboriginal author Mudrooroo Narogin, Sydney, 1988 /
No full textTitle devised by cataloguer from acquisitions documentation and reference sources.; Part of the collection: Portraits of various significant Australians, 1988-2000.; Mode of access: Online
Computational Mechanism Design for Information Fusion within Sensor Networks
No full textConventional centralised information fusion and control architectures will be challenged by developments in sensor networks that allow sophisticated autonomous sensors, owned by different stakeholders with individual goals, to interact and share information. Given this, we advocate the use of tools and techniques from computational mechanism design (CMD), a field at the intersection of computer science, game theory and economics, to address the challenges posed by these networks. In particular, CMD allows us to engineer networks with desirable system-wide properties, in which sensors act as rational selfish agents, each attempting to fulfil their own individuals goals through the exchange of observations and information. In this paper, we present our work developing such networks. Specifically, we discuss our development of a generic and principled information valuation metric for sensor networks and we report our experiences applying it within a real world information fusion sensor network scenario
William O. Reece Academic Advising Award
No full textThe William O. Reece Academic Advising Award is given each year to an individual in the Iowa State College of Veterinary Medicine who exhibits excellence in the area of academic advising. The Faculty and Alumni Awards Committee of the College of Veterinary Medicine selects the winner from student chosen nominees. This years recipient is Dr. Kristina G. Miles from the Department of Radiology, Veteirnary Clinical Sciences.</p
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Crime is in the air - air pollution and regulation in the UK
No full textThis latest briefing by Professor Reece Walters in the What is crime? series, draws attention to an area of harm that is often absent from criminological debate. He highlights the human costs of air pollution and failed attempts to adequately regulate and control such harm. Arguing for a cross disciplinary ‘eco-crime’ narrative, the author calls for greater understanding of the far-reaching consequences of air pollution which could set in train changes which may lead to a ‘more robust and meaningful system of justice’. Describing current arrangements in place to control and regulate air pollution, Walters draws attention to the lack of neutrality in current arrangements and the bias ‘towards the economic imperatives of free trade over and above the centrality of environmental protection’. While attention is often given to direct and individualised instances of ‘crime’, the serious consequences of air pollution are frequently neglected. The negative effects of pollution on health and well-being are often borne by people already experiencing a range of other disadvantages. In a global and national context, it is often the poor who are affected most. Ultimately, political and economic imperatives have historically helped to shape legal and regulatory regimes. Whether this is an inherent flaw in current systems or something that can be overcome in favour of dealing with more wide-ranging harms is an area that requires further discussion and debate
Human-agent collaboration for disaster response
No full textIn the aftermath of major disasters, first responders are typically overwhelmed with large numbers of, spatially distributed, search and rescue tasks, each with their own requirements. Moreover, responders have to operate in highly uncertain and dynamic environments where new tasks may appear and hazards may be spreading across the disaster space. Hence, rescue missions may need to be re-planned as new information comes in, tasks are completed, or new hazards are discovered. Finding an optimal allocation of resources to complete all the tasks is a major computational challenge. In this paper, we use decision theoretic techniques to solve the task allocation problem posed by emergency response planning and then deploy our solution as part of an agent-based planning tool in real-world field trials. By so doing, we are able to study the interactional issues that arise when humans are guided by an agent. Specifically, we develop an algorithm, based on a Multi-Agent Markov Decision Process representation of the task allocation problem and show that it outperforms standard baseline solutions. We then integrate the algorithm into a planning agent that responds to requests for tasks from participants in a mixed-reality location-based game, called AtomicOrchid, that simulates disaster response settings in the real-world. We then run a number of trials of our planning agent and compare it against a purely human driven system. Our analysis of these trials show that human commanders adapt to the planning agent by taking on a more supervisory role and that, by providing humans with the flexibility of requesting plans from the agent, allows them to perform more tasks more efficiently than using purely human interactions to allocate tasks. We also discuss how such flexibility could lead to poor performance if left unchecked
Modelling the thermal dynamics of buildings: a latent force model based approach
No full textMinimizing the energy consumed on heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems of residential buildings, without impacting occupants’ comfort has been highlighted as an important artificial intelligence (AI) challenge. Typically, approaches that seek to address this challenge use a model that captures the thermal dynamics within a building, also referred to as a thermal model. In this paper, we introduce a novel thermal model, which we refer to as a latent force thermal model of the thermal dynamics of a building or LFM-TM. Our model is derived from an existing grey-box thermal model, which is augmented with an extra term referred to as the learned residual. This term is capable of modelling the effect of any a priori unknown additional dynamic, which if not captured, appears as structure in a thermal models residual (the error induced by the model). More importantly, the learned residual can also capture the effects of physical elements such as a building’s envelope or the lags in a heating system, leading to a significant reduction in complexity compared to existing models. We evaluate the performance of LFM-TM on two independent data sources: the FlexHouse data, which was previously used for evaluating the efficacy of existing grey-box models [Bacher and Madsen 2011], and heating data logged within homes located on University of Southampton campus. On both datasets, we show that our approach outperforms existing models in its ability to accurately fit the observed data, generate accurate day-ahead internal temperature predictions and explain a large amount of the variability in the future observations
Young women's use of a microbicide surrogate: The complex influence of relationship characteristics and perceived male partners' evaluations
No full textThis is the post-print version of the article. The official published version can be found at the link below.Currently in clinical trials, vaginal microbicides are proposed as a female-initiated method of sexually transmitted infection prevention. Much of microbicide acceptability research has been conducted outside of the United States and frequently without consideration of the social interaction between sex partners, ignoring the complex gender and power structures often inherent in young women’s (heterosexual) relationships. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to build on existing microbicide research by exploring the role of male partners and relationship characteristics on young women’s use of a microbicide surrogate, an inert vaginal moisturizer (VM), in a large city in the United States. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 young women (18–23 years old; 85% African American; 47.5% mothers) following use of the VM during coital events for a 4 week period. Overall, the results indicated that relationship dynamics and perceptions of male partners influenced VM evaluation. These two factors suggest that relationship context will need to be considered in the promotion of vaginal microbicides. The findings offer insights into how future acceptability and use of microbicides will be influenced by gendered power dynamics. The results also underscore the importance of incorporating men into microbicide promotion efforts while encouraging a dialogue that focuses attention on power inequities that can exist in heterosexual relationships. Detailed understanding of these issues is essential for successful microbicide acceptability, social marketing, education, and use.This study was funded by a grant from National Institutes of Health (NIHU19AI 31494) as well as research awards to the first author: Friends of the Kinsey Institute Research Grant Award, Indiana University’s School of HPER Graduate Student Grant-in-Aid of Research Award, William L. Yarber Sexual Health Fellowship, and the Indiana University Graduate and Professional Student Organization Research Grant
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